Day 243 – 14th September 2018 – Darwin, Katherine Nitmiluk Gorge

I had to work from 7am to 3pm today and then rush home to finish the packing.  Angry kindly offered to pick Col up after work and the plan was for me to meet them all at Angry’s house.

I thought I would be clever and put on a load of washing to get my uniform ready and Col’s work clothes ready for the coming week, as we were going to be away all weekend.  So I put that on and continued the pack up.  I went to hang it out just before leaving and found that it had gotten off balance half way through the cycle and stopped!!  Oh no.  We had a three and a half hour drive ahead of us to get to Katherine and then we would have to set up our tent in the dark when we arrived.  I called Col to let him know what had happened and we decided to just hang out everything so it didn’t go smelly in the machine and to put my uniform in the scrubber bag with some water and bring it with us.

The pack up took me longer than expected and I was running late to get to Angry’s.  I didn’t arrive till about 6pm.  We headed off and stopped at Hungry Jacks at Coolalinga for dinner on the way.  It was a long drive, about three and a half hours with a dinner break thrown in, and we were all pretty tired when we got there.  Not easy after a hard work day, a mad pack up and a long drive.  We arrived around 10pm and then had to set up the tents in the dark.  We were trying not to be too loud and disturb the other campers but I don’t think we succeeded.  We pretty much fell into bed and went straight to sleep once we were set up.  It is funny arriving somewhere in the dark and having no idea what the place looks like.  I look forward to seeing it in the morning.  I did look at cabins to try to make things a bit easier but they were pretty expensive, so we decided on the camping instead.  The good thing is you can arrive late and pay at the bistro, but we were even too late for that.  So they were happy for us to camp there overnight and go pay in the morning.